IKEA Rage!

Sunday morning IKEA trip was nearly the end of me. Towards the end of our journey through the store, pushed along by the mass of men, women and prams, we realised that we hadn't written down the shelf details to find the flatpacked items near the store exit. Back we went, like salmon swimming upstream, trying to relocate the items we wanted to purchase. Diligently, we wrote down the aisle and shelf details and returned to the flatpack area, only to find that a couple of the items did not appear where they should have been. Eventually, we found a sales assistant, who explained to us that some of the items were actually available in a different part of the store...back where we had come from. Back we went, this time like salmon swimming upstream while pushing a large trolley with flatpacked parts of incomplete furniture on it. We find the area in which the additional part of the furniture is supposed to be stored, but guess what...there's none there. After finding another elusive sales assistant, we were informed that they were out of stock of that particular part. Arghhhhh! Back to the flat pack area to get our next item, which of course is not where it's supposed to be. Instead there is a small notice "Please obtain this item from the main furniture aisle". So back I go yet again upstream. Eventually I find the damn stools, but they are locked to the wall. Another sales assistant tries to avoid me, but eventually I corner her and ask her to release one of the stools for me. She says she has to make a phone call first. I stand close by, to make sure she doesn't run away. She has a lengthy conversation on the phone (how hard can this be?) and eventually hangs up to explain to me that she is not 'authorised' to release display stools to customers, but that there are 80 of them in the flat pack area. I beg to differ, explaining that there were no stools on the shelf, but a little sign saying to get the stools from the main furniture aisle. She then explains that the sign was referring to the main furniture aisle in the flat pack area. ARGHHHHHH! I head back to Ange, who is not answering my frantic calls on her mobile. When I find her she says that her phone has no service. Apparently IKEA is a mobile phone service black hole, just to make the whole experience a little more challenging. We go back to the flat pack area to look for stools. Can't find them anywhere. But I see a flash of yellow out of the corner of my eye and pounce on the unsuspecting sales assistant and demand to be taken to the stools. He looks panicked but then directs me to an enormous pile of stools just near the checkouts. ARGHHHHHHH!

Finally we escaped from the IKEA vortex. They should offer free counselling at the exits. Honestly, next time anyone suggests a trip to IKEA, I am going to recommend rolling in some broken glass instead - honestly, it will be less painful.

Bedding

Just down the road from my apartment is a church yard. One of the buildings has a wide veranda around it, and in the summer one or two homeless people sleep there. A couple of months ago when it started to get cold, I was walking past early one morning on my way to work. I noticed that the man sleeping on the veranda only had a thin blanket and was shivering. I immediately decided to get out my spare blankets and old doona and leave them on the veranda on the following weekend. The next day, however, as I was walking past to go to work, I noticed that someone beat me to it. On the veranda was a big pile of mattresses, sleeping bags, and blankets. Other people obviously noticed too.

Since then, it has become much colder, almost freezing, at night, and a few more people have been sleeping on the veranda. I guess it's warmer with a few bodies together. This morning I walked by at about 7am, and it was about 4 degrees celcius (just above freezing) and as I looked over at the bodies huddled under the blankets, I saw something rather touching. A cat was curled up on top of one of the bodies, fast asleep and obviously making the most of the body heat, and no doubt also giving a little comfort to the person sleeping below.

This afternoon I was walking home with my just-purchased sets of new sheets for my bed, and as I walked past the church yard I suddenly realised the enormous luxury that I take for granted on a daily basis and I was suitably humbled.

Brazilian Wax

This is hilarious!

Degusthaustion!

Last night Ange took me out for a belated birthday dinner. She took me to Circa at the Prince, one of Melbourne's top restaurants. It is actually just down the road from where I live, but I had never been there. The decor is lovely and they have a large number of wait staff on hand to give you constant (but not intrusive) service. We decided to have the 8 course degustation menu which took us 4 hours to get through! Hence our renaming the concept to encompass the exhaustion involved in the process. The food was glorious: Ange had the normal degustation menu and I had the vegetarian version. That was fun as I didn't really know what each course was, so I was experiencing all these tastes and textures often without knowing what they were. I did find the menu on the website this morning though and discovered some of the mystery flavours!

We decided just to order a bottle of wine rather than have the degustation wine list as well. The couple sitting next to us had the whole degustation extravaganza which involved a specially matched glass of wine or liquor with every course. I think I would have passed out after about the fourth glass, and not been able to make it to the end of the courses!

It was actually lovely to sit still for 4 hours and have the chance to talk for that long. In our lives these days we don't often sit still that long, let alone in an environment where there's nothing to do except talk - no television, other people to entertain, etc. We both enjoyed it, although we were exhausted and in danger of slipping into food coma by the end of the night!

Blonde moment of the week

Yesterday I rushed home from work to have a shower and get changed to go out to dinner. I took off my jacket, my sweater, my shirt, and then had a moment of "what the.....?!" because I didn't have a bra on!!! Yes, I had gone to work sans-bra and hadn't even realised. I'm glad I didn't notice until I got home or I would have died of embarassment all day at work. I can't believe I did that - I must have been half-asleep that morning when I got dressed. Luckily I had so many layers of clothes on that it wouldn't have been noticeable to anyone else. Hilarious!